News

HARTFORD — When East Haven police officers arrested a Catholic priest who was videotaping them in 2009, it sparked calls for the state legislature to better protect the public’s right to record the actions of law enforcement officials.

Five years later, additional safeguards to that right have yet to make it to the governor’s desk. Bills approved in the Senate died in the House in 2011 and 2012. Legislation last year failed to make it to a House or Senate vote.

Dawn La Valle, Division of Library Development from the Connecticut State Library, reported to the C.H. Booth Library Board of Trustees, April 8, on the results of focus groups convened to comment on the library’s search for a new director.

The Newtown Police Union opposes a town proposal that would have municipal emergency radio dispatching for 911, police, fire, and ambulance calls regionalized at a privately owned dispatching center in Prospect.

The town has proposed regionalization as a cost-savings measure which would reduce spending by approximately $149,000 annually.

The Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z), in its role as the town’s planning agency, has approved a resubdivision of land at 176 Mt Pleasant Road (Route 6) in Hawleyville.

At an April 3 session, P&Z members unanimously approved an application from Toll CT III, Limited Partnership. P&Z members decided that the application is consistent with the town’s resubdivision regulations and also with the terms of BPO (Business Professional Office) zoning. The approval takes effect on April 14.

Discussion during an April 7 Board of Selectmen meeting revealed that the eventual development of a community center being funded by a $15 million gift from General Electric may set up a domino effect of town department relocations.

Shortly after a motion was made and unanimously approved to officially accept the GE donation, and a separate motion was approved to appropriate $450,000 for preconstruction and design work, First Selectman Pat Llodra initiated a discussion on strategic planning for municipal facilities.

The chief law enforcement officer for the Judicial District of Danbury described the state’s criminal justice system to participants at a recent Citizen Police Academy session, explaining the workings of the state’s criminal courts, which annually handle thousands of cases forwarded to them by police.

Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III gave a talk, “Criminal Justice After An Arrest: The Prosecutor’s Perspective” to about 20 academy participants.

For more than a decade preceding the Sandy Hook tragedy, Easton resident and GE Capital staffer Elizabeth Rallo engaged herself in the business of producing or analyzing numbers, systems, and data.

But those analytical talents translated expertly into the many hands-on skills she brought to bear on behalf of Newtown in the nearly one year she served the community coordinating special projects and facilitating communications among various groups and project managers post-12/14.

While driving westward on Interstate 84 on the morning of Wednesday, April 9, an unidentified tractor-trailer truck driver looked into his rear-view mirror and noticed that a load of lumber positioned on his flatbed trailer had caught fire, so he stopped the truck about 2,000 feet east of the Tunnel Road overpass.

Moments after the Legislative Council voted to send the 2014-15 town and school budget requests to referendum, resident and longtime school supporter Kinga Walsh thanked officials for their efforts. She also challenged them to help get it passed, asking council members to work side-by-side with other advocates promoting passage of the spending plan.